Doing the reading that would be due Monday....
My third year of college I took an editing class. In that class we learned a style guide-- Words Into Type-- that was being used to edit a journal published in the department. It was a pretty cool class, especially since our final was editing a document submitted to the journal using that guide, where grading consisted of comparing our versions to what she actually did and then discussing it.
Ever since then, my immediate response to error is "Well, standard english doesn't really exist. Those damn comma rules change from style guide to style guide. So all those nitpicky things? Who really gives a crap anyway? You can do it completely right according to one guide, and then turn around and have it be completely wrong by another." So yeah, why bother?
My second year of teaching one of the grad students had complained long enough and hard enough that we were finally going to have to pick a handbook to use in the course. I looked through them, but ultimately somehow (whoops) never turned in the form to order one. My students' papers were no worse than the people whose had, and who had spent weeks on grammar in class.
I just don't think it's my job to teach people how to spell, or to teach them grammar (especially when "proper grammar" varies so wildly). I DO help students that are having obvious problems--subject/verb agreement, double negatives used often (and not to make a point), and so on, but I'm not going to sit there and lecture about it. Goodness knows we all got enough of that in grade school!
But error, or percieved error, is how people outside english departments judge writing (and even speaking). I had an ex (and yes, this is why he's an ex) who picked up a copy of my thesis and corrected the entire thing with red pen--entirely against the style guide I'd decided on by my committtee, then went and "helped" by making these changes on my computer when I wasn't home (I had a back up, but he still wasn't ever allowed back in my house). Instructors in other departments see error only--after all, the paper they assigned might not even allow for creativity so ideas might not be on their grading rubric! And lastly, the current boy and his dad harassed me so much any time "irregardless" or "hopefully" came out of my mouth that I've eliminated the first entirely and am working on the second.
So to recap:
1. Standard english is defined in a bunch of different ways, so there is no one right version, and I let students know about style guides instead of lecturing on proper grammar
2. People outside the university do judge on correctness though, and I have no idea how to respond to that. How do you deal with all the people out there that think grammar is all that matters because they were TAUGHT that grammar is a sign of a good writer and that it is all that matters?
Friday, September 29, 2006
Monday, September 25, 2006
new media vs. writing
So maybe somebody can clear something up for me now that would likely be cleared up later in the term anyway....
I've been lead to believe (and really not by Jeff, so maybe I'm wrong, but through my own research and through the two texts that I am reviewing) that students are being asked in the real world to both read and construct "texts" that aren't just writing. They have to be able to read visuals, internet sites, multimedia, whatever, and that composing in these genres is also seen as somewhat important in comp/rhet right now. In other words, students need to gain an understanding of new media or multimodal literacy practices as well as ordinary composing practices (I'm probably saying this horribly, so bear with me) and that since they are unlikely to get that anywhere else, and because there are compeling pedagogical reasons to do so anyway, these sorts of projects are being phased into composition courses (damn that was a long sentence).
Projects like the one that Jeff described in class today (and his insistence that theses and 5 paragraph essays aren't necessary) are part of this train of thought--we need to mix up what composition has always done to communicate in the digital world. Heck, we probably should have done so a long time ago but quite honestly there's no time like the present (so yes, despite defending the 5P in certain situations, I DON'T LIKE TEACHING IT, AT ALL. Amazing neh? But you write one thing and everybody thinks that's ALL you think. That's one thing I hate about blogging.) Anyway, we need to mix up composition. We need to rethink assignments. We need to think about multimodal projects.
So um, this class I'm designing? Students are going to write in it, a lot. But I'd like to get them thinking multimodally too, and things like a physical mapping project are some ways I've seen other instructors do that. Thinking about all the ways of communicating, and playing with them, might be a goal of such a classroom.
But is this goal "acceptable?" If my students make a skit, or write a story, or make a physical project, or a website, or make a visual argument, are they writing enough? If they're writing blogs and some major essay assignment or another, and they are writing essays about every part of their composing process and then one after the project is done, damn that's a LOT of writing. I'm perfectly fine leaving some of it out (or putting it in their blogs or message board or whatever I decide to use).
Maybe that's not my question at all, maybe my question is:
Are multimodal projects enough like writing to permit them in THIS composition course?
I've been lead to believe (and really not by Jeff, so maybe I'm wrong, but through my own research and through the two texts that I am reviewing) that students are being asked in the real world to both read and construct "texts" that aren't just writing. They have to be able to read visuals, internet sites, multimedia, whatever, and that composing in these genres is also seen as somewhat important in comp/rhet right now. In other words, students need to gain an understanding of new media or multimodal literacy practices as well as ordinary composing practices (I'm probably saying this horribly, so bear with me) and that since they are unlikely to get that anywhere else, and because there are compeling pedagogical reasons to do so anyway, these sorts of projects are being phased into composition courses (damn that was a long sentence).
Projects like the one that Jeff described in class today (and his insistence that theses and 5 paragraph essays aren't necessary) are part of this train of thought--we need to mix up what composition has always done to communicate in the digital world. Heck, we probably should have done so a long time ago but quite honestly there's no time like the present (so yes, despite defending the 5P in certain situations, I DON'T LIKE TEACHING IT, AT ALL. Amazing neh? But you write one thing and everybody thinks that's ALL you think. That's one thing I hate about blogging.) Anyway, we need to mix up composition. We need to rethink assignments. We need to think about multimodal projects.
So um, this class I'm designing? Students are going to write in it, a lot. But I'd like to get them thinking multimodally too, and things like a physical mapping project are some ways I've seen other instructors do that. Thinking about all the ways of communicating, and playing with them, might be a goal of such a classroom.
But is this goal "acceptable?" If my students make a skit, or write a story, or make a physical project, or a website, or make a visual argument, are they writing enough? If they're writing blogs and some major essay assignment or another, and they are writing essays about every part of their composing process and then one after the project is done, damn that's a LOT of writing. I'm perfectly fine leaving some of it out (or putting it in their blogs or message board or whatever I decide to use).
Maybe that's not my question at all, maybe my question is:
Are multimodal projects enough like writing to permit them in THIS composition course?
different ways of knowing
So what do you know? And what matters about what you do know in school?
I'm feeling a little culture shocked here, to be honest, in respect to what "matters" and what really doesn't. When I was redoing my vita I was suddenly struck by the idea that in a program where lit and creative writing are somewhat "important," the things I've done in relation to them somehow are important too.
I can't explain how strange it is when you go from the environment where "that theater crap you do" goes from being extra curricular to being a line on your vita. Sure, I've written plays and had them produced. But is that something important academically? I suppose it could be, if a position were ever open in something random like comp and play writing (and I've seen weirder appointments available since some universities seem to be combining positions to cut costs, and well, this little academic would gladly write plays for tenure if she had to!)
It's even stranger for "that reading you do" to somehow be related to this "canon" thing that I've not heard squat about since high school. I feel like I've missed out on something by reading for pleasure--yep, even literature--and not constantly taking notes on things. The only lit course I've had in years was a class on Chaucer, and I had already been through the Canterbury Tales twice at that point so it was easy, easy, easy. I read Troilus and Cressida for my final essay for something to do, some way to set myself apart in that course. But that's probably the only academic *fiction* reading I've done in years.
In reality, I know that these are all "different ways of knowing" the same thing. But I wonder if there's much common ground for somebody who reads for fun or writes creatively and furtively on the side and under cover (after having been told these aren't academic pursuits) to actually have a conversation? Can a canon nazi appreciate other ways or knowing? Can a free spirit ever be taught the importance of canon?
So yeah, crap. Feeling slightly out of place, longing for the days when coursework is over and I can emmerse myself in Feenberg and Haraway again. Wondering, somewhat, just how I'm going to accomplish that. And so on.
I'm feeling a little culture shocked here, to be honest, in respect to what "matters" and what really doesn't. When I was redoing my vita I was suddenly struck by the idea that in a program where lit and creative writing are somewhat "important," the things I've done in relation to them somehow are important too.
I can't explain how strange it is when you go from the environment where "that theater crap you do" goes from being extra curricular to being a line on your vita. Sure, I've written plays and had them produced. But is that something important academically? I suppose it could be, if a position were ever open in something random like comp and play writing (and I've seen weirder appointments available since some universities seem to be combining positions to cut costs, and well, this little academic would gladly write plays for tenure if she had to!)
It's even stranger for "that reading you do" to somehow be related to this "canon" thing that I've not heard squat about since high school. I feel like I've missed out on something by reading for pleasure--yep, even literature--and not constantly taking notes on things. The only lit course I've had in years was a class on Chaucer, and I had already been through the Canterbury Tales twice at that point so it was easy, easy, easy. I read Troilus and Cressida for my final essay for something to do, some way to set myself apart in that course. But that's probably the only academic *fiction* reading I've done in years.
In reality, I know that these are all "different ways of knowing" the same thing. But I wonder if there's much common ground for somebody who reads for fun or writes creatively and furtively on the side and under cover (after having been told these aren't academic pursuits) to actually have a conversation? Can a canon nazi appreciate other ways or knowing? Can a free spirit ever be taught the importance of canon?
So yeah, crap. Feeling slightly out of place, longing for the days when coursework is over and I can emmerse myself in Feenberg and Haraway again. Wondering, somewhat, just how I'm going to accomplish that. And so on.
Sunday, September 24, 2006
and now for something(s) completely different
1. Every time I read "maverick" either in this week's readings or in anybody else's responses I'm immediately reminded of Cedar Point's new roller coaster for next year by the same name (I'm still on the media list, so I'm told these things even though I refuse to go there and spend money--fools. Then again, being on the list means I can go free if I want to, hrm...) Anyway, it's called Maverick, and a maverick is a stray cow, no? So why the heck is the icon for this coaster a big freaking black horse? A whole generation of people that go to that park are undoubtedly going to think the horse is there for some reason, form some connection between "maverick" and this symbol, and go around just a little stupider than they would have been otherwise. It bothers me, probably more than it should (and probably because I know far more about their marketing dept. than I ever wanted to know).
But really, this is why I think people need to be taught to do their research. Because that ONE time they don't research something and go for the thing that "looks cool" they could be completely utterly wrong. What the heck is wrong with people? Did this coaster need to be represented by an animal? Couldn't it just as easily had some completely innocuous logo? (At least they didn't go the old west vs. let's kill the indian route... maybe that racism would have been too blatant for them. *sigh*)
2. I had professional development for school-2 yesterday, which is nearly a-ok cause we get paid for it. Nevermind that though, somebody in my department gave my boss a bad review. And when he asked who it was, she raised her hand.
Now, this is a girl that judges people instantly, thinks she's better than the rest of us, and so on. I really am glad I don't have to work with her much. But I get the idea that she's never HAD a bad boss, ever.
Sure, he's a little hard to approach at first, but you know what? He's got my back, and the back of everybody in the department. If students go to him to complain he backs us up and we never have to deal with it and it's the most beautiful thing in the entire world. Beautiful, I'm telling you.
So clearly she's never worked in the situation where you might land on your ass in front of the dean because little miss anorexic and entitled wants you to change her D to an A because ohmygod her mommy says she's a great writer and all, and not had anybody there to say that you were indeed doing your job for failing the girl for never showing up and not turning in half the assignments.
3. On that note, I'd like to add that said boss once said the most enlightening thing I've ever heard about teaching, "If I'm not hearing students complain about you sometimes, you aren't doing your job." That was one of those "whoa" moments. Sure, you don't want 'em to hate you. But if they deserve to fail and they want to pass they *aren't* going to like you, they are going to complain, and that's okay. I'd heard (mostly from other grad students ) pretty much the exact opposite, that you have to have some way of "dealing with it" to keep them from complaining, to keep your assessment scores up, to keep your job. But if you have the right supervision that's completely not the case.
So yeah to recap: research = important, my co worker is a ho, and being an honest hard ass is rewarding.
But really, this is why I think people need to be taught to do their research. Because that ONE time they don't research something and go for the thing that "looks cool" they could be completely utterly wrong. What the heck is wrong with people? Did this coaster need to be represented by an animal? Couldn't it just as easily had some completely innocuous logo? (At least they didn't go the old west vs. let's kill the indian route... maybe that racism would have been too blatant for them. *sigh*)
2. I had professional development for school-2 yesterday, which is nearly a-ok cause we get paid for it. Nevermind that though, somebody in my department gave my boss a bad review. And when he asked who it was, she raised her hand.
Now, this is a girl that judges people instantly, thinks she's better than the rest of us, and so on. I really am glad I don't have to work with her much. But I get the idea that she's never HAD a bad boss, ever.
Sure, he's a little hard to approach at first, but you know what? He's got my back, and the back of everybody in the department. If students go to him to complain he backs us up and we never have to deal with it and it's the most beautiful thing in the entire world. Beautiful, I'm telling you.
So clearly she's never worked in the situation where you might land on your ass in front of the dean because little miss anorexic and entitled wants you to change her D to an A because ohmygod her mommy says she's a great writer and all, and not had anybody there to say that you were indeed doing your job for failing the girl for never showing up and not turning in half the assignments.
3. On that note, I'd like to add that said boss once said the most enlightening thing I've ever heard about teaching, "If I'm not hearing students complain about you sometimes, you aren't doing your job." That was one of those "whoa" moments. Sure, you don't want 'em to hate you. But if they deserve to fail and they want to pass they *aren't* going to like you, they are going to complain, and that's okay. I'd heard (mostly from other grad students ) pretty much the exact opposite, that you have to have some way of "dealing with it" to keep them from complaining, to keep your assessment scores up, to keep your job. But if you have the right supervision that's completely not the case.
So yeah to recap: research = important, my co worker is a ho, and being an honest hard ass is rewarding.
rhetoric and composition
Rhetoric and composition are like second cousins secretly in love--completely legal, but they squick people out at first. Or well, so it seems. I really have no idea since I don't think I ever had a chance of not learning them hand in hand. One of my high school english teachers was a failed rhetoric phd candidate (something I found out after I went to grad school and after he died, which is a shame because the moments I had during my Masters work when I suddenly realized what he'd been quoting at us all that time were pricless--especially stuff about differance and Lacan and Heidegger. I mean christ, us freshmen just thought he was crazy--it didn't help that he often did this from the top of a table or in the middle of perfectly good arguments about what the A stands for in the Scarlet Letter.)
And then I inadvertently went to a college that was very much rhet/comp, and learned more about writing there. I enrolled in their grad school and was immediately dropped into teaching an intro to rhetoric course.
This "Rhetoric" course was actually our composition course. The composition couse had been 3 courses under quarters, but was now just one semester. That meant we had to cover a lot of ground in not a lot of time, and it was determined that "outing" rhetoric was the easiest way to do it.
So "Revisions" was a class about oral, written, and visual rhetoric. It was also a paper where you wrote a paper, did a major project, and gave a lot of presentations. This was a cousre that directly influenced the two books I'm reviewing here in a couple weeks, and I should have read them back then--but as I said before, I had found the textbook I liked already.
Rhet/comp aren't kissing cousins in my book. If we want students to actually, you know, say something, you have to give them tools through which to say those things. Words aren't enough on their own if you have no idea how to construct them. Teaching oral/written rhetoric together is one way to get to a student who can speak their ideas, but can't write them down very well. Allowing for visual rhetoric not only allows students to introduce "new" meanings to their work (like that radial reading/material text stuff we were discussing in 7010) but it also gives them that one more way to narrow down their argument that some students might need.
And thus, several years later, I've decided that that class wasn't so bad after all. It was too much material in two few weeks, but I think it was on the right track as far as "types of classes" go. Unfortunately, it was also a horribly scary type of thing for a brand new teacher to teach.
And then I inadvertently went to a college that was very much rhet/comp, and learned more about writing there. I enrolled in their grad school and was immediately dropped into teaching an intro to rhetoric course.
This "Rhetoric" course was actually our composition course. The composition couse had been 3 courses under quarters, but was now just one semester. That meant we had to cover a lot of ground in not a lot of time, and it was determined that "outing" rhetoric was the easiest way to do it.
So "Revisions" was a class about oral, written, and visual rhetoric. It was also a paper where you wrote a paper, did a major project, and gave a lot of presentations. This was a cousre that directly influenced the two books I'm reviewing here in a couple weeks, and I should have read them back then--but as I said before, I had found the textbook I liked already.
Rhet/comp aren't kissing cousins in my book. If we want students to actually, you know, say something, you have to give them tools through which to say those things. Words aren't enough on their own if you have no idea how to construct them. Teaching oral/written rhetoric together is one way to get to a student who can speak their ideas, but can't write them down very well. Allowing for visual rhetoric not only allows students to introduce "new" meanings to their work (like that radial reading/material text stuff we were discussing in 7010) but it also gives them that one more way to narrow down their argument that some students might need.
And thus, several years later, I've decided that that class wasn't so bad after all. It was too much material in two few weeks, but I think it was on the right track as far as "types of classes" go. Unfortunately, it was also a horribly scary type of thing for a brand new teacher to teach.
Thursday, September 21, 2006
publish or do your homework?
How the heck do grad students find time in the school year to publish when we're already reading and writing a lot every week for class? Is this a summer thing?
I've got an article I'd like to write (at first I thought to take the copout of doing a panel presentation on that too, but I think it actually might be publishable) and I'm actually tempted to just work on it instead of doing my homework. Hrm, that can't be good, but it interests me more than 75% of my homework. Oops. I suppose that's what research is "for" and all, to be publishable stuff we're interested in, but still....
When, oh when, do people find time to do this?
I've got an article I'd like to write (at first I thought to take the copout of doing a panel presentation on that too, but I think it actually might be publishable) and I'm actually tempted to just work on it instead of doing my homework. Hrm, that can't be good, but it interests me more than 75% of my homework. Oops. I suppose that's what research is "for" and all, to be publishable stuff we're interested in, but still....
When, oh when, do people find time to do this?
Why blogging didn't work for me before...
I've had to blog before for class and I ... didn't.
Actually, my classmates stopped long before I did, and when I figured out that if the prof held it against us she'd be holding it against EVERYONE, and them moreso than ME, then I stopped.
(Let's face it, I'm a self serving bitch about grades.)
BUT, why didn't it work? And why am I writing now?
Before, I had to respond to every reading, and also we were required to read everything that everybody else wrote, leave comments, respond, respond, respond. We had writing prompts and discussion questions that had to be answered as well from time to time.
It felt very required and rigid and silly, to be completely honest, and it wasn't something that interested any of us because somehow it had been made boring.
When I took a training class this summer, mostly online, I absolutely hated it. I had to write discussion questions each week on a discussion board, and respond to X number of people. However, 3 of X number of people were Deans from other departments who didn't feel like they had to follow our due dates, so we'd all end up responding to them late--which made our responses late in turn. "Why haven't you responded to enough people?" Well, I don't know, maybe because half of them haven't posted yet!
I yearned for the certification I was earning, and so I was often up posting past midnight to make a deadline.
I was not a happy little student.
And, of course, that sort of online "You must write this much, you must respond this much" system is EXACTLY what I'm required to er, require, in hybrid/blended classes. Crap. There are state guidelines about replacing seat time, and if I don't do it, the school could be sued and I could lose my job. Wonderful.
But I hate those sort of required assignments, I really do. And I don't want to require blogging in THAT WAY in a course here either.
So what sort of ways can students be motivated if they aren't required to respond to certain questions, or even to specific readings, and aren't required to read other people or leave them notes? I'm just INTERESTED here, so it works. But what if I weren't???
Actually, my classmates stopped long before I did, and when I figured out that if the prof held it against us she'd be holding it against EVERYONE, and them moreso than ME, then I stopped.
(Let's face it, I'm a self serving bitch about grades.)
BUT, why didn't it work? And why am I writing now?
Before, I had to respond to every reading, and also we were required to read everything that everybody else wrote, leave comments, respond, respond, respond. We had writing prompts and discussion questions that had to be answered as well from time to time.
It felt very required and rigid and silly, to be completely honest, and it wasn't something that interested any of us because somehow it had been made boring.
When I took a training class this summer, mostly online, I absolutely hated it. I had to write discussion questions each week on a discussion board, and respond to X number of people. However, 3 of X number of people were Deans from other departments who didn't feel like they had to follow our due dates, so we'd all end up responding to them late--which made our responses late in turn. "Why haven't you responded to enough people?" Well, I don't know, maybe because half of them haven't posted yet!
I yearned for the certification I was earning, and so I was often up posting past midnight to make a deadline.
I was not a happy little student.
And, of course, that sort of online "You must write this much, you must respond this much" system is EXACTLY what I'm required to er, require, in hybrid/blended classes. Crap. There are state guidelines about replacing seat time, and if I don't do it, the school could be sued and I could lose my job. Wonderful.
But I hate those sort of required assignments, I really do. And I don't want to require blogging in THAT WAY in a course here either.
So what sort of ways can students be motivated if they aren't required to respond to certain questions, or even to specific readings, and aren't required to read other people or leave them notes? I'm just INTERESTED here, so it works. But what if I weren't???
Random school related observations
1. The way to get computers fixed around these parts is the phrase "it's the one with the stuffed dog on top, and the password doesn't work."
2. I'm having a lot of trouble telling the difference between crazy people and people with bluetooth headsets.
3. I apparently actually do understand the history of rhetoric assignment for next week, but still can't vocalize it for crap.
4. Parking apparently opens up right after I get out of work--nifty.
5. No amount of crappy professional development can possibly take the place of one really good pedagogy course. However, even given this I don't think my boss will accept my skipping the 8am-1pm mandatory Saturday training this weekend. *sigh*
2. I'm having a lot of trouble telling the difference between crazy people and people with bluetooth headsets.
3. I apparently actually do understand the history of rhetoric assignment for next week, but still can't vocalize it for crap.
4. Parking apparently opens up right after I get out of work--nifty.
5. No amount of crappy professional development can possibly take the place of one really good pedagogy course. However, even given this I don't think my boss will accept my skipping the 8am-1pm mandatory Saturday training this weekend. *sigh*
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
textbooks don't really suck...
Undergrad English textbooks make me sad. I don't think they suck, I don't think they are horrible, I just think they are horribly easy. And yes, I'm a grad student, and yes, I should find their material easy, but I would have found most of the exposition of English readers easy in high school--and I do think that's a problem.
I've read any number of readers and handbooks over time in hopes of finding one at the undergraduate level that didn't talk down to students. I'd like one that uses words with more than five or six letters.... sometimes. I'd like one that maybe completley LEAVES OUT exposition around readings and lets me frame them on my own as a teacher (or hell, as a student) because exposition invariably reads as "you're too dumb to understand this on your own" or "you probably learned this in junion high but just in case you weren't paying attention..."
I'm not sure why any college textbook feels like it has to start from ground zero. End of piece questions in one text I've been reading start at the "Why did so and so do this?" level, which was specifically stated in the text, and I absolutely know that we answered that same question to readings in third grade. These questions are supposed to save me time as an instructor (not having to write my own) and yet they don't, at all, because if I want synthesis questions, if I want the students to connect readings to their lives and to their own writing and to the world, then I'm going to have to write my own anyway that call for something higher than K-12 thought.
And that's why when I taught comp and nothing but comp, long long ago, I taught from what was considered a graduate level coursebook at my school. (Well, the other reason was that I was told that it couldn't be done, wouldn't work, and I really love proving people wrong.) Design Writing Research worked just fine on an undergraduate level, even though students' understanding of the text was very different than the graduate level of understanding that was attained in a course I took that used it.
First of all, maybe it's strange to use a book explicitely about graphic design, material texts, and deconstruction in a composition course. However, the book provided interesting studies in things like subliminal messages and page design that forced students to think in new ways. The book got good reviews from the students too, "the book made me think" was a common one. When I had to use an easier, more expensive, and longer book I didn't get that response--ever. Everybody hated it, and they didn't understand why they had to read things they already knew.
Second of all, the book was colorful, had lots of pictures, and there were many different ways to use the readings. We actually talked, in a very light sort of way, about deconstructing texts means, and how to look at new media and pictures and even situations as texts.
Students worked up to the level that I asked them to be at when I taught out of that book. My earlier classes had gone well (I used that book my second year of teaching) but the level of thought that came out of them was lower. It's hard to get students thinking about complex issues when the reader presents absolutely zero of them, and it's even harder when the reader presents complex issues, but then frames them with exposition that is so long, so explanatory, that students instantly agree with the exposition instead of reading and figuring out their own viewpoints first.
That said I have no idea what book I want to use next term. Bugger.
I've read any number of readers and handbooks over time in hopes of finding one at the undergraduate level that didn't talk down to students. I'd like one that uses words with more than five or six letters.... sometimes. I'd like one that maybe completley LEAVES OUT exposition around readings and lets me frame them on my own as a teacher (or hell, as a student) because exposition invariably reads as "you're too dumb to understand this on your own" or "you probably learned this in junion high but just in case you weren't paying attention..."
I'm not sure why any college textbook feels like it has to start from ground zero. End of piece questions in one text I've been reading start at the "Why did so and so do this?" level, which was specifically stated in the text, and I absolutely know that we answered that same question to readings in third grade. These questions are supposed to save me time as an instructor (not having to write my own) and yet they don't, at all, because if I want synthesis questions, if I want the students to connect readings to their lives and to their own writing and to the world, then I'm going to have to write my own anyway that call for something higher than K-12 thought.
And that's why when I taught comp and nothing but comp, long long ago, I taught from what was considered a graduate level coursebook at my school. (Well, the other reason was that I was told that it couldn't be done, wouldn't work, and I really love proving people wrong.) Design Writing Research worked just fine on an undergraduate level, even though students' understanding of the text was very different than the graduate level of understanding that was attained in a course I took that used it.
First of all, maybe it's strange to use a book explicitely about graphic design, material texts, and deconstruction in a composition course. However, the book provided interesting studies in things like subliminal messages and page design that forced students to think in new ways. The book got good reviews from the students too, "the book made me think" was a common one. When I had to use an easier, more expensive, and longer book I didn't get that response--ever. Everybody hated it, and they didn't understand why they had to read things they already knew.
Second of all, the book was colorful, had lots of pictures, and there were many different ways to use the readings. We actually talked, in a very light sort of way, about deconstructing texts means, and how to look at new media and pictures and even situations as texts.
Students worked up to the level that I asked them to be at when I taught out of that book. My earlier classes had gone well (I used that book my second year of teaching) but the level of thought that came out of them was lower. It's hard to get students thinking about complex issues when the reader presents absolutely zero of them, and it's even harder when the reader presents complex issues, but then frames them with exposition that is so long, so explanatory, that students instantly agree with the exposition instead of reading and figuring out their own viewpoints first.
That said I have no idea what book I want to use next term. Bugger.
Jesus Camp
So you need to go watch the video previews for this documentary, located here: Jesus Camp .
Alright, feeling thoroughly gross/scared/pissed off/whatever now? Good.
I wanted to write about this because I'm sort of a Christian, and I often feel like that comes into direct conflict with my liberal and quasi-feminist sensibilities. Because you say "I'm a Christian" or you wear a cross, and you just see people's opinion of you change for the worse in the academy 90% of the time. I'm actually only aware of 1-2 other academics in my own field that I would consider more devout than me, and I hardly ever go to church. I might, if it were good socialization time. But really, all Catholic Churches seem to be are big cesspools of drama and old lady gossip and I get enough of that from my students!
But those videos did two things: they scared me and they made me want to admit my beliefs less. I'm actually going to address part 2 of that first...
I'm not one of those "you must accept Christ as your lord and savior to go to heaven" sorts of people. In fact, I really just think you need to treat other people well. Some version of the 'golden rule' is in nearly every religion out there. In fact, my beliefs aren't even particularly in conflict with my pagan friends beliefs, some of them think I am one of them. The core beliefs--there might be some sort of afterlife (note the might), you should treat others well, etc. are just about the same in the majority of major religions. Prayer and spells have a whole lot in common, not that your average fluffy bunny pagan wants to admit that. There are advantages and disadvantages to just about every belief system.
I don't think we need to beat down other religions, and that's where the first statement I made up there comes in.
To think that Christians (not Catholics, because there is generally a big difference between ceremonies with people talking in tongues and spazzing out and those without, I hope, and I've never been to any in a Catholic Church where somebody did) are now telling kids that they need to be soldiers of God? To give them the sorts of training that children might get in the middle east?
Sorry, that's some freaky shit.
Muslims are not our enemies. Hindus are not our enemies. And for the portions of those countries that are currently in "conflict" with us, the individuals that live in those countries and worship are NOT our enemies--really.
To teach kids that they are, that they should lay down their own lives for Jesus, to make those kids willing to kill themselves or others for Jesus--well I'm sorry, but if Jesus really has the power to come back from the dead I really hope it's to put the smack down on these fuckers. (Pardon the swearing, but what else ARE they?)
This sort of training isn't for good, this isn't singing little happy Jesus loves me songs (which I always giggled at and nobody else ever seemed to know why...) this is the sort of creepy evil that is creeping into public institutions everywhere (See: the president, etc.)
That our country's elections can be swayed by Fundamentalists scares me. That they act like extremists scares me more. I've ran into extremists from several religions and they all believe in the same crap: they hear voices, they think they know when the world is going to end, they think they have the right to control other people's lives...
Actually, the one recommendation I usually give entering college freshmen is NOT to join a student religious group because it's easy for the group to become too dramatic, to engage in too much group think, etc. I think this might be true of organized religion in general, but I've seen it happen to my friends in both pagan and christian groups, so I can only really speak for those. And if that's true, then the last thing I'd want is for my kids to be introduced to that crap early. Sheesh.
Oh, and lastly? Little girls should not refer to dancing as "For God" or "for the flesh." There's something intrinsically creepy in young girls beginning to think that dancing is purely for seduction, especially when kids' dance classes are so often just for exercise, coordination, and so on. *sigh*
Alright, feeling thoroughly gross/scared/pissed off/whatever now? Good.
I wanted to write about this because I'm sort of a Christian, and I often feel like that comes into direct conflict with my liberal and quasi-feminist sensibilities. Because you say "I'm a Christian" or you wear a cross, and you just see people's opinion of you change for the worse in the academy 90% of the time. I'm actually only aware of 1-2 other academics in my own field that I would consider more devout than me, and I hardly ever go to church. I might, if it were good socialization time. But really, all Catholic Churches seem to be are big cesspools of drama and old lady gossip and I get enough of that from my students!
But those videos did two things: they scared me and they made me want to admit my beliefs less. I'm actually going to address part 2 of that first...
I'm not one of those "you must accept Christ as your lord and savior to go to heaven" sorts of people. In fact, I really just think you need to treat other people well. Some version of the 'golden rule' is in nearly every religion out there. In fact, my beliefs aren't even particularly in conflict with my pagan friends beliefs, some of them think I am one of them. The core beliefs--there might be some sort of afterlife (note the might), you should treat others well, etc. are just about the same in the majority of major religions. Prayer and spells have a whole lot in common, not that your average fluffy bunny pagan wants to admit that. There are advantages and disadvantages to just about every belief system.
I don't think we need to beat down other religions, and that's where the first statement I made up there comes in.
To think that Christians (not Catholics, because there is generally a big difference between ceremonies with people talking in tongues and spazzing out and those without, I hope, and I've never been to any in a Catholic Church where somebody did) are now telling kids that they need to be soldiers of God? To give them the sorts of training that children might get in the middle east?
Sorry, that's some freaky shit.
Muslims are not our enemies. Hindus are not our enemies. And for the portions of those countries that are currently in "conflict" with us, the individuals that live in those countries and worship are NOT our enemies--really.
To teach kids that they are, that they should lay down their own lives for Jesus, to make those kids willing to kill themselves or others for Jesus--well I'm sorry, but if Jesus really has the power to come back from the dead I really hope it's to put the smack down on these fuckers. (Pardon the swearing, but what else ARE they?)
This sort of training isn't for good, this isn't singing little happy Jesus loves me songs (which I always giggled at and nobody else ever seemed to know why...) this is the sort of creepy evil that is creeping into public institutions everywhere (See: the president, etc.)
That our country's elections can be swayed by Fundamentalists scares me. That they act like extremists scares me more. I've ran into extremists from several religions and they all believe in the same crap: they hear voices, they think they know when the world is going to end, they think they have the right to control other people's lives...
Actually, the one recommendation I usually give entering college freshmen is NOT to join a student religious group because it's easy for the group to become too dramatic, to engage in too much group think, etc. I think this might be true of organized religion in general, but I've seen it happen to my friends in both pagan and christian groups, so I can only really speak for those. And if that's true, then the last thing I'd want is for my kids to be introduced to that crap early. Sheesh.
Oh, and lastly? Little girls should not refer to dancing as "For God" or "for the flesh." There's something intrinsically creepy in young girls beginning to think that dancing is purely for seduction, especially when kids' dance classes are so often just for exercise, coordination, and so on. *sigh*
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
how involved are grad students supposed to be?
This is a question I've never had the right answer to, and that I suppose I should figure out at some point.
When I applied to my PhD program, several friends from grad school were surprised I wanted to go back to school at all. I'm not sure why that is--I like teaching, I like new media/composition/rhet stuff, and I honestly don't want to adjunct for the rest of my life. The timing is a little strange, I'll admit, since at some point I'll be working, going to grad school, and planning a wedding, but otherwise stuff's okay.
But no, they all said something to the effect of "But you really weren't that involved, you had your own stuff going on, you didn't buy into the academic bullshit...."
Hrm.... I have no idea what the heck that means.
While a Masters candidate I:
1. Served on the graduate student council
2. Served on the liberal arts curriculum committee, helped to write a new major, got it passed by the school and the state, and then helped revamp another. We also wrote up the guidelines for the next year's assessment.
3. Ran and partcipated in a few student clubs (yay service)
4. Attended meetings, parties, and so on for grad students
5. Spent anywhere from 20-80 hours in the lab a week trying to get stuff to work when the support staff refused to
And so on. Sure I wasn't reading in my office, but quite honestly my recliner at home was more comfy.
So I don't understand "not involved" other than the fact I wasn't sitting in class spouting this stuff from the rafters and shouting "Look what I DO!" like several of my classmates. In fact, I kinda thought that was tacky. Talking about what you love is one thing, talking about it to show off is entirely something else. I did talk about my community involvement a lot, I guess, as I did theater and choreography work, but again--talking about what you LOVE is one thing. Talking about the private work of a committee you're serving on? Yeah, not so cool.
Over this summer, a post was made to the English grads list (here, not there) wherein uninvolved GTAs were discussed. I haven't made it to a SAGE meeting yet, and I'm beginning to panic that people will think I'm uninvolved again, that I have too much of my own shit going on to partcipate. And unparticipatory GTAs just aren't understood--or so sayeth the e-mail.
Fridays are my reading and work day, the ONE day I'm guaranteed off of everything. I can give that up, and would willingly, except that lately that also means this is the day I do other things.
Last week I got my car fixed (the suspension had a technical service bulletin out on it, and I had known something was up for awhile, so now that's done), and this week my mom's dog is having surgery to remove a tumor on Thursday, and it's just my guess, but she's probably going to need help.
I know where my priority lies--I want to help the people I care about. But I also don't want anybody to ever wonder just why the heck I'm here either. And in that, I'm slightly frustrated. I know there's plenty of time to get involved later, but I also know that there's no end to the other stuff I have to do. And, if the doggy has cancer, there's really no end to the babysitting I will most likely have to do on my day off so she can do things like buy groceries.
And well, that had nothing to do with class or pedagogy. Bite me.
When I applied to my PhD program, several friends from grad school were surprised I wanted to go back to school at all. I'm not sure why that is--I like teaching, I like new media/composition/rhet stuff, and I honestly don't want to adjunct for the rest of my life. The timing is a little strange, I'll admit, since at some point I'll be working, going to grad school, and planning a wedding, but otherwise stuff's okay.
But no, they all said something to the effect of "But you really weren't that involved, you had your own stuff going on, you didn't buy into the academic bullshit...."
Hrm.... I have no idea what the heck that means.
While a Masters candidate I:
1. Served on the graduate student council
2. Served on the liberal arts curriculum committee, helped to write a new major, got it passed by the school and the state, and then helped revamp another. We also wrote up the guidelines for the next year's assessment.
3. Ran and partcipated in a few student clubs (yay service)
4. Attended meetings, parties, and so on for grad students
5. Spent anywhere from 20-80 hours in the lab a week trying to get stuff to work when the support staff refused to
And so on. Sure I wasn't reading in my office, but quite honestly my recliner at home was more comfy.
So I don't understand "not involved" other than the fact I wasn't sitting in class spouting this stuff from the rafters and shouting "Look what I DO!" like several of my classmates. In fact, I kinda thought that was tacky. Talking about what you love is one thing, talking about it to show off is entirely something else. I did talk about my community involvement a lot, I guess, as I did theater and choreography work, but again--talking about what you LOVE is one thing. Talking about the private work of a committee you're serving on? Yeah, not so cool.
Over this summer, a post was made to the English grads list (here, not there) wherein uninvolved GTAs were discussed. I haven't made it to a SAGE meeting yet, and I'm beginning to panic that people will think I'm uninvolved again, that I have too much of my own shit going on to partcipate. And unparticipatory GTAs just aren't understood--or so sayeth the e-mail.
Fridays are my reading and work day, the ONE day I'm guaranteed off of everything. I can give that up, and would willingly, except that lately that also means this is the day I do other things.
Last week I got my car fixed (the suspension had a technical service bulletin out on it, and I had known something was up for awhile, so now that's done), and this week my mom's dog is having surgery to remove a tumor on Thursday, and it's just my guess, but she's probably going to need help.
I know where my priority lies--I want to help the people I care about. But I also don't want anybody to ever wonder just why the heck I'm here either. And in that, I'm slightly frustrated. I know there's plenty of time to get involved later, but I also know that there's no end to the other stuff I have to do. And, if the doggy has cancer, there's really no end to the babysitting I will most likely have to do on my day off so she can do things like buy groceries.
And well, that had nothing to do with class or pedagogy. Bite me.
Monday, September 18, 2006
on why I'm a horrible student....
There's any number of reasons why I'm a horrible student. For one, I hold my professors to the same standards I hold myself as an instructor, so when it's been 3 months since I took a training course in hybrid teaching and the teacher still hasn't caught up on grading--I'm irate. I complain a lot. I hate students that complain a lot. I realize that this smacks of irony, and I make no move to change.
But I am also a horrible student because if you put a computer in front of me, I will most likely not be doing whatever the heck it is you want me to do in class. I'll do it, and rather than sitting there waiting for further instruction, I'll be the kid with another window open putzing around, checking my e-mail, answering my own student's questions, redesigning my website, or... you know... whatever. No, I'm not going to browse to myspace or facebook, but really, is doing other work any better? And if multi tasking attracts me this much, and I know it does, how am I supposed to say "no! bad student! no cookie!" when one of them does it?
I was in a course my first year of Masters work that was all about using technology in the classroom and nothing else. I signed up for the course because technology was my concentration and it "fit." What didn't fit was how many hours we spent in a lab, listening to lecture, and being encouraged to use the software/hardware we were discussing at the same time.
One day, our class was learning how to create MOO pages on LinguaMOO. MOOS are multi user role playing systems that have also been used successfully to emulate classrooms. They're a synchronous chat tool, and you can also record conversations and leave notes and use them like message boards. The latest versions employ HTML, though when I learned to use one back in 1998-1999 they were strictly text based only (go left, walk north, read notice, and so on).
I decorated my room in the MOO, and then quickly grew bored. See, when I was a senior in high school a friend from my future school had made me an account on the MOO system. He knew I liked computers, and he said I could play around and learn MOO programming. I learned to make objects that people could play with. For example, one of the first objects most people make is a bottle of pepsi (or whatever) that can be drank a certain number of times by other users (so you have a variable built in called number of drinks, and each time you subtract 1, and when it's all "gone" you can auto change the description to be an empty bottle of whatever). Objects can be picked up and moved, or move themselves. Objects can also imitate people and respond as people (and oh, this will be important later).
But that day, I started dorking around with creating objects. Julie had woken up that morning to a bat hanging over her futon, and guano on her futon. So I made a little bat that would make noise periodically ("The bat goes EEK!" would then punctuate our discussion online, as well as the overhead projection running of the MOO--nice). It flew around, oh, and left a big pile of poo every hour or so (which was set to disappear after 3 just so that poo wouldn't build up all over the MOO). She was amused. I made a little dog, and then I designed a car (for vehicles can be made to warp into private rooms).
Essentially, I wanted to show my teacher that students can do all SORTS of things on MOOs that we don't really want them to do. Sadly enough, I'm not sure he got that. He was just all "nifty!" while I was sort of peeved that he wasn't worried that I had gotten access to his private room where grades and documents were kept. Sorry, but sometimes students DO know how to do these things, and even if they don't, there's great directions on how to do it online.
So, class is coming to a close, and we decide to meet from home for the next class period. Everyone is to log on at 7 in the morning...
7... in the ... freaking .... morning.
Ha. Yeah the heck right.
Soooo, I read the readings very very completely and wrote up some very good responses to them. I created a copy of my character in the MOO. I put this "fake me" into the classroom. And then I set it to respond to certain words in other people's posts. (Again, it was programmed to only say each thing once, and it did manage to respond to several direct questions. I already knew this class turned into a clusterfuq as soon as conversation started, personal questions were often not answered).
And then I slept right through class.
And nobody noticed.
Now, some people I've told this story to said that any student that did that had done the assignment. They had studied more and worked harder than potentionally anybody else in the class, and earned the sleep. I still consider it cheating, and I wouldn't want my students to do it. If I want to have a synchronous chat I want them there, not some parrot of themselves there. And so ultimately this use of technology wasn't fair.
But, you get me near technology and that's what happens. I become the bad kid. I just can't help it.
But I am also a horrible student because if you put a computer in front of me, I will most likely not be doing whatever the heck it is you want me to do in class. I'll do it, and rather than sitting there waiting for further instruction, I'll be the kid with another window open putzing around, checking my e-mail, answering my own student's questions, redesigning my website, or... you know... whatever. No, I'm not going to browse to myspace or facebook, but really, is doing other work any better? And if multi tasking attracts me this much, and I know it does, how am I supposed to say "no! bad student! no cookie!" when one of them does it?
I was in a course my first year of Masters work that was all about using technology in the classroom and nothing else. I signed up for the course because technology was my concentration and it "fit." What didn't fit was how many hours we spent in a lab, listening to lecture, and being encouraged to use the software/hardware we were discussing at the same time.
One day, our class was learning how to create MOO pages on LinguaMOO. MOOS are multi user role playing systems that have also been used successfully to emulate classrooms. They're a synchronous chat tool, and you can also record conversations and leave notes and use them like message boards. The latest versions employ HTML, though when I learned to use one back in 1998-1999 they were strictly text based only (go left, walk north, read notice, and so on).
I decorated my room in the MOO, and then quickly grew bored. See, when I was a senior in high school a friend from my future school had made me an account on the MOO system. He knew I liked computers, and he said I could play around and learn MOO programming. I learned to make objects that people could play with. For example, one of the first objects most people make is a bottle of pepsi (or whatever) that can be drank a certain number of times by other users (so you have a variable built in called number of drinks, and each time you subtract 1, and when it's all "gone" you can auto change the description to be an empty bottle of whatever). Objects can be picked up and moved, or move themselves. Objects can also imitate people and respond as people (and oh, this will be important later).
But that day, I started dorking around with creating objects. Julie had woken up that morning to a bat hanging over her futon, and guano on her futon. So I made a little bat that would make noise periodically ("The bat goes EEK!" would then punctuate our discussion online, as well as the overhead projection running of the MOO--nice). It flew around, oh, and left a big pile of poo every hour or so (which was set to disappear after 3 just so that poo wouldn't build up all over the MOO). She was amused. I made a little dog, and then I designed a car (for vehicles can be made to warp into private rooms).
Essentially, I wanted to show my teacher that students can do all SORTS of things on MOOs that we don't really want them to do. Sadly enough, I'm not sure he got that. He was just all "nifty!" while I was sort of peeved that he wasn't worried that I had gotten access to his private room where grades and documents were kept. Sorry, but sometimes students DO know how to do these things, and even if they don't, there's great directions on how to do it online.
So, class is coming to a close, and we decide to meet from home for the next class period. Everyone is to log on at 7 in the morning...
7... in the ... freaking .... morning.
Ha. Yeah the heck right.
Soooo, I read the readings very very completely and wrote up some very good responses to them. I created a copy of my character in the MOO. I put this "fake me" into the classroom. And then I set it to respond to certain words in other people's posts. (Again, it was programmed to only say each thing once, and it did manage to respond to several direct questions. I already knew this class turned into a clusterfuq as soon as conversation started, personal questions were often not answered).
And then I slept right through class.
And nobody noticed.
Now, some people I've told this story to said that any student that did that had done the assignment. They had studied more and worked harder than potentionally anybody else in the class, and earned the sleep. I still consider it cheating, and I wouldn't want my students to do it. If I want to have a synchronous chat I want them there, not some parrot of themselves there. And so ultimately this use of technology wasn't fair.
But, you get me near technology and that's what happens. I become the bad kid. I just can't help it.
Sunday, September 17, 2006
5-paragraph vs. "Just an essay" essays
I accidently wrote a 5-paragraph precis last week--I am ashamed. Bad instructor, no new Mac for you. (And so on.) Of course, it really was an accident. I was taught to write 4 sentence precis (ergh! what's the plural of that?). Ours had to be longer, so I wrote a 4 sentence one, and the piece I was writing it about happened to have 3 examples which made nice little summary paragraphs to insert in the middle and make it longer. Still, suddenly being told to write a 2 pager hurt my "but this is the form" sensibilities.
And that's exactly how students probably feel at first when told they don't have to, and indeed shouldn't, continue writing X-paragraph form essays. Hell, that's probably how some teachers feel when told they should be teaching something else. 5-paragraph essays are really easy to check and grade. Students still can put a lot of original thought into their body paragraphs (I've seen it, so I know it can be done, though I don't think I'm capable personally), and they're a decent way to get students to barf back up facts.
I've told students that 5-paragraph essays are the way to go on essay tests in some teacher's classes (and at other institutions I could even tell you what those teachers were, and that writing your in class essay answers in this form was the only way to get an A on blue book exams).
So I'm not entirely against the 5-paragraph essay. It has its place, I learned it in high school, and I put it to good use in my undergraduate education to get myself some rather undeserved A's in history courses (and one about Chaucer). I knew what I was doing wasn't good writing, heck, I don't even consider myself a good writer. But, I was able to figure out when 5 paragraph was expected and not.
I think what process specialists and expressivists like Elbow are trying to teach students is to move beyond the 5 paragraph form. It has its place, but its place is limited. Nobody's gonna publish a 5 paragraph essay in a journal for ANY discipline. Nobody is going to truly be interested to read writing that just barfs back what a person has read or heard in class. In testing, when we want to know what you've read or heard in class, then the 5-paragraph essay works well. But I'm not testing my students when I assign an essay, and I have to let them know that. Many teachers use the essay as a test of what they've learned, and this particular form in question is a fairly good way of demonstrating that.
But all writing is not a test. All writing is not being judged as a test. Sometimes writing is just being judged as effective communication of ideas--proof of having ideas--and that's when the 5-paragraph essay fails (and it doesn't just begin to fail, it crashes and burns).
It's problematic, however, that the essay form may be expected of students by other instructors throughout their college career. Instead of teaching it in a course, I might like to see it moved to some weekend seminars that students that don't know it can sign up for. That we composition instructors can safely move beyond it without feeling like they are shortchanging their students an essential tool in getting by at school.
I, like Ellen, am not sure if the touchy-feely-ness of the expressivists is the way to go. But they wrote in the 60s, and were probably high, and what the heck do I expect anyway? I call my pedagogy a "student advocate," I'm on their side, seeing to their needs, and yet I'm still snarky, sarcastic, and a hard ass if its called for. I don't think that anybody needs to be a "oh let's value ideas over grammar and form" person all the time. "Your ideas rock, your writing needs revision" is a fine comment, though perhaps needs to be rephrased. But without ideas, writing is pretty empty, so what else can we say?
And that's exactly how students probably feel at first when told they don't have to, and indeed shouldn't, continue writing X-paragraph form essays. Hell, that's probably how some teachers feel when told they should be teaching something else. 5-paragraph essays are really easy to check and grade. Students still can put a lot of original thought into their body paragraphs (I've seen it, so I know it can be done, though I don't think I'm capable personally), and they're a decent way to get students to barf back up facts.
I've told students that 5-paragraph essays are the way to go on essay tests in some teacher's classes (and at other institutions I could even tell you what those teachers were, and that writing your in class essay answers in this form was the only way to get an A on blue book exams).
So I'm not entirely against the 5-paragraph essay. It has its place, I learned it in high school, and I put it to good use in my undergraduate education to get myself some rather undeserved A's in history courses (and one about Chaucer). I knew what I was doing wasn't good writing, heck, I don't even consider myself a good writer. But, I was able to figure out when 5 paragraph was expected and not.
I think what process specialists and expressivists like Elbow are trying to teach students is to move beyond the 5 paragraph form. It has its place, but its place is limited. Nobody's gonna publish a 5 paragraph essay in a journal for ANY discipline. Nobody is going to truly be interested to read writing that just barfs back what a person has read or heard in class. In testing, when we want to know what you've read or heard in class, then the 5-paragraph essay works well. But I'm not testing my students when I assign an essay, and I have to let them know that. Many teachers use the essay as a test of what they've learned, and this particular form in question is a fairly good way of demonstrating that.
But all writing is not a test. All writing is not being judged as a test. Sometimes writing is just being judged as effective communication of ideas--proof of having ideas--and that's when the 5-paragraph essay fails (and it doesn't just begin to fail, it crashes and burns).
It's problematic, however, that the essay form may be expected of students by other instructors throughout their college career. Instead of teaching it in a course, I might like to see it moved to some weekend seminars that students that don't know it can sign up for. That we composition instructors can safely move beyond it without feeling like they are shortchanging their students an essential tool in getting by at school.
I, like Ellen, am not sure if the touchy-feely-ness of the expressivists is the way to go. But they wrote in the 60s, and were probably high, and what the heck do I expect anyway? I call my pedagogy a "student advocate," I'm on their side, seeing to their needs, and yet I'm still snarky, sarcastic, and a hard ass if its called for. I don't think that anybody needs to be a "oh let's value ideas over grammar and form" person all the time. "Your ideas rock, your writing needs revision" is a fine comment, though perhaps needs to be rephrased. But without ideas, writing is pretty empty, so what else can we say?
Saturday, September 16, 2006
I, personally....
Last week in class we talked briefly about how students write essays, and all the sorts of random words that mean nothing that get thrown into these essays. "I, personally," was one such example, which I'd like to respond to here.
These, and others, are words that I know I write a lot. I write these words often because I spent a few years working and writing online.
I was an online news editor and moderator for a largish site. Previously I was invisible on the site (even though I was one of only a few females) but working there meant that I was at events and was visible, and slowly but surely became more active on the boards as well.
Any stated opinion, that was not labeled in at least 2-3 ways as an opinion, would immediately be flamed on this site (and it's not alone, most large sites with forums have this problem--so do many blogs). Flaming usually consisted of a "you're stupid" or multiple paragraphs noting exactly what things should have been cited in the stated opinion--in other words, not writing "I, personally" or "this is just my opinion but X, but I could be wrong" or anything else like it wasted both energy and moderators time.
So I learned, albeit sluggishly, that I was allowed to have an opinion, but only if I subvert my natural voice in a way to seem completely innocuous.
Now, had my experiences stopped there, then maybe I wouldn't still feel the intense urge to duck and cover at having a public blog (my others are all private--see? there I go again, just so nobody can point out that I do have others) or at having a public website from which all the harrassment can start again--but the experience did not stop there.
I met many of our users in person at various events. I had to interact with them, I had to be nice, they had to see what I looked like.
And most of these fellows were far from appropriate.
It became known that I had turned down someone prominent in the community, and his revenge against me became the most important thing (seemingly--see? there it is again) in many of these peoples' lives.
I summarily was stalked, harassed, had entire websites and message forums *created* about how huge my ass is, how unattractive I am, and so on. I had the marketing director at an event I was at tell me just how disappointed she was in me for hurting this person. I lost job offers, I quit my existing job, and I still occasionally get e-mails based upon things that I posted at that site 2 years ago. Violence was threatened online, but it didn't count because it was a public forum and they didn't use my whole name.
My opinions, and my general inability to let somebody down lightly, got me into a lot of trouble. I'm not comfortable posting strong opinions online for these and other reasons. I have them, but I'd really rather not share them here (what if a hiring committee reads this, knowing it's me, in a few years? What if they don't agree with me liking/disliking a theorist? What if my views have changed? And so on....)
One of my other brief contracts at another company involved researching potential hires online--their myspace, facebook profiles, and so on. I know these things can be found, heck, I know that I could find me. I can't expect any less from anybody looking for me in the future.
So I know that I have to be careful what I say and how I say it.
And given that, I have a lot of trouble--still--asking students to blog. I have spirited discussions behind "closed doors" on BlackBoard with my students. It's a safe room where nobody else can hear them. That's been my pedagogical choice so far. I'd love to see what can happen on blogs. I know many of my students already do.
I'm thinking of experimenting with anonymous usernames on drupal or wikis or moodle (oh my!) which would be harder to trace.
In any case, what do other people think about online safety, harassment, and potential hirability problems related to keeping blogs? Our students aren't concerned (and they should be--at least about myspace and facebook) so does that mean we have to be concerned for them?
These, and others, are words that I know I write a lot. I write these words often because I spent a few years working and writing online.
I was an online news editor and moderator for a largish site. Previously I was invisible on the site (even though I was one of only a few females) but working there meant that I was at events and was visible, and slowly but surely became more active on the boards as well.
Any stated opinion, that was not labeled in at least 2-3 ways as an opinion, would immediately be flamed on this site (and it's not alone, most large sites with forums have this problem--so do many blogs). Flaming usually consisted of a "you're stupid" or multiple paragraphs noting exactly what things should have been cited in the stated opinion--in other words, not writing "I, personally" or "this is just my opinion but X, but I could be wrong" or anything else like it wasted both energy and moderators time.
So I learned, albeit sluggishly, that I was allowed to have an opinion, but only if I subvert my natural voice in a way to seem completely innocuous.
Now, had my experiences stopped there, then maybe I wouldn't still feel the intense urge to duck and cover at having a public blog (my others are all private--see? there I go again, just so nobody can point out that I do have others) or at having a public website from which all the harrassment can start again--but the experience did not stop there.
I met many of our users in person at various events. I had to interact with them, I had to be nice, they had to see what I looked like.
And most of these fellows were far from appropriate.
It became known that I had turned down someone prominent in the community, and his revenge against me became the most important thing (seemingly--see? there it is again) in many of these peoples' lives.
I summarily was stalked, harassed, had entire websites and message forums *created* about how huge my ass is, how unattractive I am, and so on. I had the marketing director at an event I was at tell me just how disappointed she was in me for hurting this person. I lost job offers, I quit my existing job, and I still occasionally get e-mails based upon things that I posted at that site 2 years ago. Violence was threatened online, but it didn't count because it was a public forum and they didn't use my whole name.
My opinions, and my general inability to let somebody down lightly, got me into a lot of trouble. I'm not comfortable posting strong opinions online for these and other reasons. I have them, but I'd really rather not share them here (what if a hiring committee reads this, knowing it's me, in a few years? What if they don't agree with me liking/disliking a theorist? What if my views have changed? And so on....)
One of my other brief contracts at another company involved researching potential hires online--their myspace, facebook profiles, and so on. I know these things can be found, heck, I know that I could find me. I can't expect any less from anybody looking for me in the future.
So I know that I have to be careful what I say and how I say it.
And given that, I have a lot of trouble--still--asking students to blog. I have spirited discussions behind "closed doors" on BlackBoard with my students. It's a safe room where nobody else can hear them. That's been my pedagogical choice so far. I'd love to see what can happen on blogs. I know many of my students already do.
I'm thinking of experimenting with anonymous usernames on drupal or wikis or moodle (oh my!) which would be harder to trace.
In any case, what do other people think about online safety, harassment, and potential hirability problems related to keeping blogs? Our students aren't concerned (and they should be--at least about myspace and facebook) so does that mean we have to be concerned for them?
Deconstructing a syllabus...
I love that moment of doing research for a short paper when you discover that this week's readings correspond greatly to a book your instructor has published.
I'd love it even more if I owned the book and could find out, in advance, his opinions on our topic for next week, "Defining the Material Text" and it makes me even happier I didn't volunteer to present next week. Whew.
See link: http://www.amazon.com/Constructivist-Moment-Material-Cultural-Poetics/dp/0819566101
I'd love it even more if I owned the book and could find out, in advance, his opinions on our topic for next week, "Defining the Material Text" and it makes me even happier I didn't volunteer to present next week. Whew.
See link: http://www.amazon.com/Constructivist-Moment-Material-Cultural-Poetics/dp/0819566101
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
students dealing with death...
As an aside to the whole "suicidal kids expelled" thing, I was reminded of an incident that happened at my old institution.
They had a suicide policy of their own: if a student committed suicide, we weren't to talk about it. This was to prevent copy cat suicides. A number of studies have found that students will indeed kill themselves if they know somebody else has.
One of my students came up to me after class. He seemed sort of nervous so I asked him what was up.
"Uh, I'm not going to be here on Thursday but I can't have an excused absence."
"Why not? You know my policy is for you just to be honest and get the work in ahead of time--"
"Oh yeah, that's not a problem, but see I'm going to my old roomate's funeral. He wasn't in school this term cause he was depressed and he--" and here the student furtively looks around as if he's going to say something horribly bad "--killed himself."
"God I'm really sorry."
"Yeah so the school says I can't have an excused absence, I'm not even supposed to let anybody know that I know about it."
"Yeah so," and here I spoke loudly, "You need that day off for an interview downstate huh? Good for you!" Which produced a smile, but ... sheesh.
Actually, most teachers don't follow or don't know the rules. I only knew them because an administrator happened to be in one of my graduate courses. He explained the basic policy, but I still hate it for two reasons.
One is that students who know these kids aren't ever allowed to publicly mourn. THEY don't get to have prayer services on campus for their classmates, or advertise them on campus if they want to have them off. And I think students need a time to mourn. I can't imagine just moving on as if nothing happened and not having any support besides University counseling where you feel you can tell the truth.
Second, I feared getting a note in my mailbox that said a student had killed themself. If we weren't allowed to talk about it, for fear of students following suit, what exactly do you say when the student's group members wonder where he or she has gotten to? How the HELL do you answer without crying? At least if they die some other way people can talk about it in class, admit that something horible has happened, and eventually let it go. It's been two years and remembering the conversation above still breaks my heart.
I realize that "studies" say that this sort of rule is necessary, but that doesn't mean that it feels right to me.
They had a suicide policy of their own: if a student committed suicide, we weren't to talk about it. This was to prevent copy cat suicides. A number of studies have found that students will indeed kill themselves if they know somebody else has.
One of my students came up to me after class. He seemed sort of nervous so I asked him what was up.
"Uh, I'm not going to be here on Thursday but I can't have an excused absence."
"Why not? You know my policy is for you just to be honest and get the work in ahead of time--"
"Oh yeah, that's not a problem, but see I'm going to my old roomate's funeral. He wasn't in school this term cause he was depressed and he--" and here the student furtively looks around as if he's going to say something horribly bad "--killed himself."
"God I'm really sorry."
"Yeah so the school says I can't have an excused absence, I'm not even supposed to let anybody know that I know about it."
"Yeah so," and here I spoke loudly, "You need that day off for an interview downstate huh? Good for you!" Which produced a smile, but ... sheesh.
Actually, most teachers don't follow or don't know the rules. I only knew them because an administrator happened to be in one of my graduate courses. He explained the basic policy, but I still hate it for two reasons.
One is that students who know these kids aren't ever allowed to publicly mourn. THEY don't get to have prayer services on campus for their classmates, or advertise them on campus if they want to have them off. And I think students need a time to mourn. I can't imagine just moving on as if nothing happened and not having any support besides University counseling where you feel you can tell the truth.
Second, I feared getting a note in my mailbox that said a student had killed themself. If we weren't allowed to talk about it, for fear of students following suit, what exactly do you say when the student's group members wonder where he or she has gotten to? How the HELL do you answer without crying? At least if they die some other way people can talk about it in class, admit that something horible has happened, and eventually let it go. It's been two years and remembering the conversation above still breaks my heart.
I realize that "studies" say that this sort of rule is necessary, but that doesn't mean that it feels right to me.
Dissent in the classroom (Harris Response)
I just finished reading A Teaching Subject and I was reminded of several incidents by the student letter that appears in an interchapter late in the book. The student has written to his school complaining that the composition class he took expected him to agree with his instructor, always be extremely liberal, etc. in order to get a good grade.
This has been a hot topic this past year, it seems, since student groups have been formed to oust liberal instructors (and if you didn't know this already, there are plenty of news articles about it at Google News).
I can't completely disagree with this student and others. There was a grad student, that I worked with previously, who made her students jump through ridiculous hoops to get an A. I suppose there's a possibility that she might read this some day, and to some extent, I don't care.
She was the local extremist, perfectly willing to mark down students that didn't agree with her--but she didn't fail them unless they actually refused to do the work. A few did. Common assignments in this class included writing letters to representatives, attending peace rallies and marches, and so on. Students felt like they HAD to do these extra curriculars to get a good grade in the course.
In 2001, courses started and nearly immediately 9/11 occurred. She restructured her entire course around having her students write about what had happened and how America deserved it, about how Americans are overwhelmingly bad people, and so on.
And it doesn't really matter if you agree or disagree with that, the point is that students shouldn't have to feel forced to agree with her--or else. A few students that refused to do the huge projects she had them working on, and instead wanted to do the syllabus work, got far lower grades than they might have otherwise. And it's also important to realize that this course had nothing to do with composition anymore (or rhetoric, or visual rhetoric) so the students weren't getting the instruction they deserved to begin with.
----------------------
My second example is.... me. In my second year of teaching I was presented with a difficult student. From the first day of class on she would whisper "I hate this fucking class" and generally made life hell for everybody else that was enjoying the class. As a TA I couldn't ask her to leave, I could only ask her to speak to my supervisor. We figured out it really wouldn't matter who was teaching, she'd obviously hate it just as much, so I felt like I was on damage control all term. (Apparently my supervisor thought I could handle this. I really wish she'd been shuttled off to somebody else more experienced, but I guess it *was* a good experience for me in the end.)
She got around to writing her paper, and it was ragingly, flamingly racist. All she did was talk about how much she hated black people, blamed them for everything that went wrong in her life, and how THEY were the reason she didn't get into U of M. It was supposed to be a position paper against Affirmative Action, but she couldn't represent the other side of the argument, and that--plus the racism--made it a pretty horrible persuasive paper. The only people that this paper spoke to were the turds that post on Stormfront.org, and her audience was supposed to be her classmates (some of which were students of color).
So hey--moral dilemmna. Do I flat out tell her I won't accept her opinion in my class (which as an anti-racist advocate is probably what I should do) or do I tell her how to fix her argument (which was a non biased teacher is probably what I should do).
In the end, I chose to try and help her make her argument palatable to more people. She still got a C on the paper because she still couldn't understand anything might be positive about Affirmative Action. I won a small amount in the end by having her tone her argument down a lot for her in class presentation. But she still swore at me, claimed I was trying to change her mind, and said she hated the "fucking" class every single day.
I can't even explain how happy I was when that term was over.
But even with many more classes behind me I still can't figure out what a teacher is supposed to do in this situation. Today I'd probably just disallow those topics entirely, but if I want to leave political topics open, how do you deal with students like this girl?
This has been a hot topic this past year, it seems, since student groups have been formed to oust liberal instructors (and if you didn't know this already, there are plenty of news articles about it at Google News).
I can't completely disagree with this student and others. There was a grad student, that I worked with previously, who made her students jump through ridiculous hoops to get an A. I suppose there's a possibility that she might read this some day, and to some extent, I don't care.
She was the local extremist, perfectly willing to mark down students that didn't agree with her--but she didn't fail them unless they actually refused to do the work. A few did. Common assignments in this class included writing letters to representatives, attending peace rallies and marches, and so on. Students felt like they HAD to do these extra curriculars to get a good grade in the course.
In 2001, courses started and nearly immediately 9/11 occurred. She restructured her entire course around having her students write about what had happened and how America deserved it, about how Americans are overwhelmingly bad people, and so on.
And it doesn't really matter if you agree or disagree with that, the point is that students shouldn't have to feel forced to agree with her--or else. A few students that refused to do the huge projects she had them working on, and instead wanted to do the syllabus work, got far lower grades than they might have otherwise. And it's also important to realize that this course had nothing to do with composition anymore (or rhetoric, or visual rhetoric) so the students weren't getting the instruction they deserved to begin with.
----------------------
My second example is.... me. In my second year of teaching I was presented with a difficult student. From the first day of class on she would whisper "I hate this fucking class" and generally made life hell for everybody else that was enjoying the class. As a TA I couldn't ask her to leave, I could only ask her to speak to my supervisor. We figured out it really wouldn't matter who was teaching, she'd obviously hate it just as much, so I felt like I was on damage control all term. (Apparently my supervisor thought I could handle this. I really wish she'd been shuttled off to somebody else more experienced, but I guess it *was* a good experience for me in the end.)
She got around to writing her paper, and it was ragingly, flamingly racist. All she did was talk about how much she hated black people, blamed them for everything that went wrong in her life, and how THEY were the reason she didn't get into U of M. It was supposed to be a position paper against Affirmative Action, but she couldn't represent the other side of the argument, and that--plus the racism--made it a pretty horrible persuasive paper. The only people that this paper spoke to were the turds that post on Stormfront.org, and her audience was supposed to be her classmates (some of which were students of color).
So hey--moral dilemmna. Do I flat out tell her I won't accept her opinion in my class (which as an anti-racist advocate is probably what I should do) or do I tell her how to fix her argument (which was a non biased teacher is probably what I should do).
In the end, I chose to try and help her make her argument palatable to more people. She still got a C on the paper because she still couldn't understand anything might be positive about Affirmative Action. I won a small amount in the end by having her tone her argument down a lot for her in class presentation. But she still swore at me, claimed I was trying to change her mind, and said she hated the "fucking" class every single day.
I can't even explain how happy I was when that term was over.
But even with many more classes behind me I still can't figure out what a teacher is supposed to do in this situation. Today I'd probably just disallow those topics entirely, but if I want to leave political topics open, how do you deal with students like this girl?
Monday, September 11, 2006
suicidal? Now you could be expelled too.
See article here: here about a bunch of college either expelling students who are suicidal or kicking them out of the dorms.
This was regular practice where I was employed before, and it drive me absolutely nuts. I realize that students might receive better counseling at home, but I can't imagine that the following scenario wouldn't happen:
Thought 1: Oh god, I'm doing horrible in class, I'm a huge fuck up, my relationships are all trash, I'm all emo and want to die!
Thought 2: I should really go see somebody about this... *makes appointment at campus counseling center*
And then they get sent home to have...
Thought 3: Oh god! now I've been kicked out of school and lost my chance at ever having a good career!
Sorry, but that's not the best way to get people help, in fact, that's just going to teach students to NOT get help, since it might really destroy their chances now at getting a degree.
I know that plenty of students go on to pursue degrees when they get older, but that won't keep people from feeling like failures if they get expelled for suicidal THOUGHTS now.
This was regular practice where I was employed before, and it drive me absolutely nuts. I realize that students might receive better counseling at home, but I can't imagine that the following scenario wouldn't happen:
Thought 1: Oh god, I'm doing horrible in class, I'm a huge fuck up, my relationships are all trash, I'm all emo and want to die!
Thought 2: I should really go see somebody about this... *makes appointment at campus counseling center*
And then they get sent home to have...
Thought 3: Oh god! now I've been kicked out of school and lost my chance at ever having a good career!
Sorry, but that's not the best way to get people help, in fact, that's just going to teach students to NOT get help, since it might really destroy their chances now at getting a degree.
I know that plenty of students go on to pursue degrees when they get older, but that won't keep people from feeling like failures if they get expelled for suicidal THOUGHTS now.
adjuncts
I recently discovered Invisible Adjunct which in one sense is a crying shame because the blog is "over," but I've still been browsing the archives.
One of the posts (linked above) discusses unions and adjuncts and gate keeping of the "guild" of teaching, namely, the writer believes that terminal MA's (or MS's) that teach in 4 year universities are a problem, are taking away from other people's chances at tenure (Universities don't have to offer as many tenured or even full time positions if they can hire lots of part time teachers), and that we need to be more careful who we are hiring on as faculty in a school--that people need to have PhDs in order to be teaching in 4 year institutions.
That strikes pretty close to home--I've spent the past year teaching in a 4 year institution with what was essentially a terminal MS, even though I had every intention of going back to school and have done so. Most of the people I work with, and whom I hold near and dear, are also people who earned their Masters and stopped (many even earned it online, which I find untenable and unequal to the degree I worked to earn, but if they are good instructors I'm not exactly going to complain!)
Should this school be hiring people with "real" PhD's? Tuition is already $180 per credit hour, classes are 4 credits, and we are on quarters still. That's a lot of tuition per year when students can take more than 20 credits providing sufficient academic advancement. If we employed PhDs to teach all the courses then tuition would be higher, and undoubtedly students wouldn't get all that much better of an education (perhaps even worse, as the article states).
So what does the PhD do that the MS/MA doesn't? I assume the answer is "research," although I'm currently involved in a group research project at that institution. And if adjuncts are performing research, writing grants, and teaching courses, who needs a PhD?
And that is, perhaps, exactly the question that universities are asking themselves.
Given that question, perhaps I should fear the adjunct. Will I be hired, or will an adjunct steal my job away when I do finally finish my degree? Am I part of a greater problem? And given that the money I make as a TA at my school is no where near enough money to live in the region the school is located in what ELSE am I supposed to do (other than flipping burgers, which would take more time and net me less cash) in order to make enough money to--you know--buy food?
One of the posts (linked above) discusses unions and adjuncts and gate keeping of the "guild" of teaching, namely, the writer believes that terminal MA's (or MS's) that teach in 4 year universities are a problem, are taking away from other people's chances at tenure (Universities don't have to offer as many tenured or even full time positions if they can hire lots of part time teachers), and that we need to be more careful who we are hiring on as faculty in a school--that people need to have PhDs in order to be teaching in 4 year institutions.
That strikes pretty close to home--I've spent the past year teaching in a 4 year institution with what was essentially a terminal MS, even though I had every intention of going back to school and have done so. Most of the people I work with, and whom I hold near and dear, are also people who earned their Masters and stopped (many even earned it online, which I find untenable and unequal to the degree I worked to earn, but if they are good instructors I'm not exactly going to complain!)
Should this school be hiring people with "real" PhD's? Tuition is already $180 per credit hour, classes are 4 credits, and we are on quarters still. That's a lot of tuition per year when students can take more than 20 credits providing sufficient academic advancement. If we employed PhDs to teach all the courses then tuition would be higher, and undoubtedly students wouldn't get all that much better of an education (perhaps even worse, as the article states).
So what does the PhD do that the MS/MA doesn't? I assume the answer is "research," although I'm currently involved in a group research project at that institution. And if adjuncts are performing research, writing grants, and teaching courses, who needs a PhD?
And that is, perhaps, exactly the question that universities are asking themselves.
Given that question, perhaps I should fear the adjunct. Will I be hired, or will an adjunct steal my job away when I do finally finish my degree? Am I part of a greater problem? And given that the money I make as a TA at my school is no where near enough money to live in the region the school is located in what ELSE am I supposed to do (other than flipping burgers, which would take more time and net me less cash) in order to make enough money to--you know--buy food?
Friday, September 08, 2006
Why girly shoes?
"High heels are the work of the patriarchy," my officemate snootily informed me, wandering around on our dirty carpet, bare naked feet leaving impressions in the dust. "My ex husband made me wear them, and I'm never going to again, and I don't think that anybody who does is a good person or a good feminist."
As I sat there blinking for awhile, and I looked down at my strappy wedges, I realized that my working definition of a lot of different terms was going to have to change. I like feminism AND shoes, after all, and according to most of the people I worked with then, those two things didn't go together.
"You can't be taken seriously unless you X" is a fairly common walked out trope by certain sorts of feminists, and I'm not particularly sure why. After all, if we're trying to break free from being X because somebody tells us to, isn't it just as bad to do Y because someone tells us to?
And as such, I shut up, the argument faded into winter, when boots meant that my options for shoes were big bulky Columbia boots or big bulky Timberlands, and eventually people started believing that I might just start to be on their side after all.
But is it enough? Am I a bad person for not currently owning a single pair of Birkenstocks? And, furthermore, is it really a problem that I'm a lot more moderate than your everyday average feminist or liberal? And, being in academia, what does my general appearance have to say about me? (And, if you count clothes over time, who the heck wears a shirt from threadless one day and D&G the next? Am I stuck permanently in some sort of bipolar moderateness that means that NOBODY will take my work seriously once they actually, you know, meet me?)
Hence, girly shoes + theory as a blog. I love wedges, I love bluefly.com. I love buying designer stuff on the cheap, because sometimes (depending on brand and style, so you have to shop well) it lasts longer than its cheaply priced counterparts. My students have appreciated this in the past (but their comments... weren't so nice about other teachers, and aren't worth reporting here).
Elizabeth Flynn actually has an interesting book out about multiple feminisms and their rhetoric. Quite honestly the idea that there is only one definition of any -ism out there is kinda silly. The book is called Feminism Beyond Modernism and I'm considering using some of its research in a paper I have to write later this term.
And to wrap it up, I'll tie this directly to class/teaching:
I changed my style during grad school, when it became apparent that wearing t-shirt and jeans made my students, to nearly a one, think I was a lesbian. I was really tired of answering questions about queer theory asked in jest (or to make fun of me) that I had no business answering because I'm straight--queer is not part of my identity, and I can't speak FOR anyone who is, just because I wear jeans and clunky boots all the freaking time. (The sheer number of people that were, indeed, homosexual that were grad students at that department at that time, is immaterial, their conclusions were cruel, and I felt the need to defend my colleaugues. After all, just because someone is queer doesn't mean you should dismiss them as an instructor, and that's just what these staunch little republicans were trying to do!)
And thus, I was lead to find girlier clothes for the first time ever. I discovered a couple stores that will do for the 20s to 30s set if you can pick through the teenage garbage--Maurice's (which sells flattering business wear as well as fancy but affordable day to day clothes), Vanity (more of the same), and Forever 21--a Christian run junk pit of eclectic weirdness made in California sweatshops but that is, nevertheless, fashionable.
But due to the fact that Forever 21 was crappy and sort of a liberal sin, I finally found my way online.
The real answer to this question is: Shop at www.bluefly.com
There are designer clothes there, they are relatively cheap, and there's stuff to fit all tastes/budgets/blah blah blah. But what's really important is that it's a great place to browse and find stuff that suits you and is fashionable all at once. Through bluefly I fell in love with wedge heels and I no longer get grilled about my sexuality on the first day of class just because I happen to be a female English student. *sigH*
As I sat there blinking for awhile, and I looked down at my strappy wedges, I realized that my working definition of a lot of different terms was going to have to change. I like feminism AND shoes, after all, and according to most of the people I worked with then, those two things didn't go together.
"You can't be taken seriously unless you X" is a fairly common walked out trope by certain sorts of feminists, and I'm not particularly sure why. After all, if we're trying to break free from being X because somebody tells us to, isn't it just as bad to do Y because someone tells us to?
And as such, I shut up, the argument faded into winter, when boots meant that my options for shoes were big bulky Columbia boots or big bulky Timberlands, and eventually people started believing that I might just start to be on their side after all.
But is it enough? Am I a bad person for not currently owning a single pair of Birkenstocks? And, furthermore, is it really a problem that I'm a lot more moderate than your everyday average feminist or liberal? And, being in academia, what does my general appearance have to say about me? (And, if you count clothes over time, who the heck wears a shirt from threadless one day and D&G the next? Am I stuck permanently in some sort of bipolar moderateness that means that NOBODY will take my work seriously once they actually, you know, meet me?)
Hence, girly shoes + theory as a blog. I love wedges, I love bluefly.com. I love buying designer stuff on the cheap, because sometimes (depending on brand and style, so you have to shop well) it lasts longer than its cheaply priced counterparts. My students have appreciated this in the past (but their comments... weren't so nice about other teachers, and aren't worth reporting here).
Elizabeth Flynn actually has an interesting book out about multiple feminisms and their rhetoric. Quite honestly the idea that there is only one definition of any -ism out there is kinda silly. The book is called Feminism Beyond Modernism and I'm considering using some of its research in a paper I have to write later this term.
And to wrap it up, I'll tie this directly to class/teaching:
I changed my style during grad school, when it became apparent that wearing t-shirt and jeans made my students, to nearly a one, think I was a lesbian. I was really tired of answering questions about queer theory asked in jest (or to make fun of me) that I had no business answering because I'm straight--queer is not part of my identity, and I can't speak FOR anyone who is, just because I wear jeans and clunky boots all the freaking time. (The sheer number of people that were, indeed, homosexual that were grad students at that department at that time, is immaterial, their conclusions were cruel, and I felt the need to defend my colleaugues. After all, just because someone is queer doesn't mean you should dismiss them as an instructor, and that's just what these staunch little republicans were trying to do!)
And thus, I was lead to find girlier clothes for the first time ever. I discovered a couple stores that will do for the 20s to 30s set if you can pick through the teenage garbage--Maurice's (which sells flattering business wear as well as fancy but affordable day to day clothes), Vanity (more of the same), and Forever 21--a Christian run junk pit of eclectic weirdness made in California sweatshops but that is, nevertheless, fashionable.
But due to the fact that Forever 21 was crappy and sort of a liberal sin, I finally found my way online.
The real answer to this question is: Shop at www.bluefly.com
There are designer clothes there, they are relatively cheap, and there's stuff to fit all tastes/budgets/blah blah blah. But what's really important is that it's a great place to browse and find stuff that suits you and is fashionable all at once. Through bluefly I fell in love with wedge heels and I no longer get grilled about my sexuality on the first day of class just because I happen to be a female English student. *sigH*
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Bad vs. Good Student Stories (Wayne Booth Response Part 2)
Why do we always want to talk about bad student stories?
I suspect it's because bad students are funny, while good students just are--or some such thing.
Seeing as I just got an e-mail from a summer student that bugged the living heck out of me, I'm going to share some GOOD teaching/student stories instead, just to even out things a bit. Of course, this is probably also going to be quite dull in comparison to my bad student stories, which is a shame.
Story 1:
Imagine a 40 something mother of a few, lives in Taylor, is learning to use a computer as part of going back to school. Things in my class are going great, she's learning everything she needs to, and overall we're getting along swell.
Of course, she constantly complained about her math class (the teacher was let go at the end of the semester, so it wasn't like she was complaining for no good reason!) Finally, she came in one day and just said she needed help. I'm certified to teach the class she was in--so why not?
We sat down and it turned out her instructor had given her a sheet about the metric system, but had given her no other information. They were to have a quiz the next day and she had never seen the information before--that hurts. I had no teaching math tools with me, and honestly felt a little prepared. But me? I've never learned the "English" system of measurement, so this stuff was cake, right?
So I take a half drank bottle of Squirt(r) and a nickle (all I had in my purse, it was one of those terms) and we start talking about how many nickles would go into a bottle of Squirt and so on. It *worked.* It worked really well. She aced her quiz the next day and came into class later that week absolutely glowing.
*Cool.*
Story 2:
It was my first semester teaching, and as I've told some people before, I was doing okay--but I still felt like the person that hadn't bothered to say their name the first day of class. I finally got around to assigning a big group project on audience and comic books and redesigning documents for different media and new audiences... and it ended in skits (or movies, or whatever... they had to pick something visual/oral, in any case...)
So I walk into my classroom and the entire room has been transformed. The students in one group worked over time to paint and build "sets" out of old cardboard boxes they had moved in with, had costumes, you name it. I was completely blown away by how creative different groups had gotten with the project. Actually, that project continued to wow me until I stopped teaching at Tech. Every term I saw something new: sock puppets, flash movies, etc. and every term I came out of that project feeling like we had actually DONE something.
I suspect it's because bad students are funny, while good students just are--or some such thing.
Seeing as I just got an e-mail from a summer student that bugged the living heck out of me, I'm going to share some GOOD teaching/student stories instead, just to even out things a bit. Of course, this is probably also going to be quite dull in comparison to my bad student stories, which is a shame.
Story 1:
Imagine a 40 something mother of a few, lives in Taylor, is learning to use a computer as part of going back to school. Things in my class are going great, she's learning everything she needs to, and overall we're getting along swell.
Of course, she constantly complained about her math class (the teacher was let go at the end of the semester, so it wasn't like she was complaining for no good reason!) Finally, she came in one day and just said she needed help. I'm certified to teach the class she was in--so why not?
We sat down and it turned out her instructor had given her a sheet about the metric system, but had given her no other information. They were to have a quiz the next day and she had never seen the information before--that hurts. I had no teaching math tools with me, and honestly felt a little prepared. But me? I've never learned the "English" system of measurement, so this stuff was cake, right?
So I take a half drank bottle of Squirt(r) and a nickle (all I had in my purse, it was one of those terms) and we start talking about how many nickles would go into a bottle of Squirt and so on. It *worked.* It worked really well. She aced her quiz the next day and came into class later that week absolutely glowing.
*Cool.*
Story 2:
It was my first semester teaching, and as I've told some people before, I was doing okay--but I still felt like the person that hadn't bothered to say their name the first day of class. I finally got around to assigning a big group project on audience and comic books and redesigning documents for different media and new audiences... and it ended in skits (or movies, or whatever... they had to pick something visual/oral, in any case...)
So I walk into my classroom and the entire room has been transformed. The students in one group worked over time to paint and build "sets" out of old cardboard boxes they had moved in with, had costumes, you name it. I was completely blown away by how creative different groups had gotten with the project. Actually, that project continued to wow me until I stopped teaching at Tech. Every term I saw something new: sock puppets, flash movies, etc. and every term I came out of that project feeling like we had actually DONE something.
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
I am *dumb*
Failing to realize that the 4C's deadline was months ago makes me one dumb academic.
So now I'm off in search of a conference for the second paper I'd like to give this year (Computers and Writing seems like a good venue to the first).
*insert completely random swearing here, as in "Goddamn all ye holy mary mother of menstruating Christ."*
So now I'm off in search of a conference for the second paper I'd like to give this year (Computers and Writing seems like a good venue to the first).
*insert completely random swearing here, as in "Goddamn all ye holy mary mother of menstruating Christ."*
Wayne Booth -- A Teacher's Journal Part 1
What scares me about teaching?
1. Complacency -- I've taught some courses that are driven by certification exams. I teach the exams, I teach the exams well. The students pass, every term. But these are by no means the sort of good, thoughtful courses that I want to be teaching (and that's the precise reason that I'm here, back in school, pursuing a higher degree instead of adjuncting forever).
2. Not being "young" anymore -- Parts of my pedagogy and persona in the classroom rely upon being approximately the same age as my students--give or take about 5 years. When that overlap no longer exists I will either have adapted or be screwed--and I'm trying to begin this process with each new term. I can't very well teach the rhetoric of 80s/early 90s cartoons and commercials to people who weren't alive then, can I?
3. Getting back into "serious" composition -- I've taught business writing and tech writing for a bit now, how can I get back into teaching straight composition? And will everyone be able to tell I'm one of "those" people?
4. That what I've "learned" about teaching doesn't actually make me a better teacher -- When I started out, everybody got relatively good grades (hey, getting called before the dean during christmas break for giving a C taught me my lesson at that school quickly). And yet, I can't even truly say that I was inflating grades. I was developing thoughtful projects that students tended to excel on that included plenty of chances for students to use outside literacies (and therein I avoided the concept of inflation by giving plenty of chances at success...)
And students LIKED me for that, or maybe they liked their good grades....
I no longer fear students disliking me, and I no longer fear giving bad grades. But I don't know that that makes me a better teacher--it just makes me better psychologically equipped to deal with it.
I will probably write another response to this article later.... that deals with some more specifics, rather than what gives me the willies at 3am....
...but one thing in the article that DID bother me was his negative reaction to a student writer who had written a paper that "missed its mark" in criticizing an author.
What could this student have learned from his response, other than not to try to write something difficult?
1. Complacency -- I've taught some courses that are driven by certification exams. I teach the exams, I teach the exams well. The students pass, every term. But these are by no means the sort of good, thoughtful courses that I want to be teaching (and that's the precise reason that I'm here, back in school, pursuing a higher degree instead of adjuncting forever).
2. Not being "young" anymore -- Parts of my pedagogy and persona in the classroom rely upon being approximately the same age as my students--give or take about 5 years. When that overlap no longer exists I will either have adapted or be screwed--and I'm trying to begin this process with each new term. I can't very well teach the rhetoric of 80s/early 90s cartoons and commercials to people who weren't alive then, can I?
3. Getting back into "serious" composition -- I've taught business writing and tech writing for a bit now, how can I get back into teaching straight composition? And will everyone be able to tell I'm one of "those" people?
4. That what I've "learned" about teaching doesn't actually make me a better teacher -- When I started out, everybody got relatively good grades (hey, getting called before the dean during christmas break for giving a C taught me my lesson at that school quickly). And yet, I can't even truly say that I was inflating grades. I was developing thoughtful projects that students tended to excel on that included plenty of chances for students to use outside literacies (and therein I avoided the concept of inflation by giving plenty of chances at success...)
And students LIKED me for that, or maybe they liked their good grades....
I no longer fear students disliking me, and I no longer fear giving bad grades. But I don't know that that makes me a better teacher--it just makes me better psychologically equipped to deal with it.
I will probably write another response to this article later.... that deals with some more specifics, rather than what gives me the willies at 3am....
...but one thing in the article that DID bother me was his negative reaction to a student writer who had written a paper that "missed its mark" in criticizing an author.
What could this student have learned from his response, other than not to try to write something difficult?
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
but I "have to..."
One of my biggest challenges as an educator and student is my need to overcome the "have to's."
I've successfully worked through "failing them guilt," and stepped into a realm where students earn whatever the heck they earn. I've gotten over being shocked when students don't like me. This has been exacerbated by students doing things like walking into my lecture 2 hours late and telling me to start over because I'm "going too fast" and am a "horrible teacher." I don't feel the slightest degree of guilt in refusing, not being pushed around, and telling the student to catch up on their own time or get out, because everybody else is where they need to be. Your grade is not equivalent to my problem.
I've gotten over people dropping my course. Yeah, I'll admit it, it crushed me first term. But again, time has proven that most of the time if a student drops you don't really want them in your class anyway. You could help them--sure--if you had infinite time and resources. You can imagine these wonderful teaching scenes straight out of made for TV movies where you sit down and they GET it and you magically cure their problems at home too. But 99% of the time that doesn't happen, and you just have a headache at the end of the day.
So, given this, what I really have to work on is my feeling of "having to" do something, that I don't really "have to" do. I've got to determine for myself what's important and what isn't and stop trying to be Super Teacher all the time (it's no little wonder that the letters emblazoned on Super Teacher's chest would be an ST) and just start trying to be whatever the heck it is that comes under that...
Case in point, finding out that I might be able to get webspace to host a website again. I lost my access to 1 and 1 and my website there months ago. I'd love to have webspace again...
But my mind tells me "You must redesign your webpage now! Make it better! Oh, and update your CV that you haven't touched in a year or more!"
Which, if I'm totally honest, is the last thing I need to work on right now. I have to read for Thursday (and Monday, but that seems far in the future right now). I have to move into my office, and pick out what random assorted office crap is going with me. I have to figure out when in the hell I'm going to have time to eat on Thursday--but I am *not* going to have time to update my CV by then.
As for the website, I could work on it, I guess, but not this week. It's not going to be CSS--that's for sure--because I lack a PC at home to test it on thoroughly (btw, Windows Vista sucks, please spare yourself the cash when it comes out). My Mac is very very slow, I'm running software on it that I probably shouldn't be--overtaxed processors are never much fun--and the latest version of Dreamweaver is SO slow on it that I can literally run nothing else (nevermind that Photoshop and Dreamweaver won't even open on the PC, because Vista swallows so much memory...)
Nope nope, I don't have the time, energy, or computing power to give over to making a brand spanking new webpage right now.
But I feel like I "have to."
I've successfully worked through "failing them guilt," and stepped into a realm where students earn whatever the heck they earn. I've gotten over being shocked when students don't like me. This has been exacerbated by students doing things like walking into my lecture 2 hours late and telling me to start over because I'm "going too fast" and am a "horrible teacher." I don't feel the slightest degree of guilt in refusing, not being pushed around, and telling the student to catch up on their own time or get out, because everybody else is where they need to be. Your grade is not equivalent to my problem.
I've gotten over people dropping my course. Yeah, I'll admit it, it crushed me first term. But again, time has proven that most of the time if a student drops you don't really want them in your class anyway. You could help them--sure--if you had infinite time and resources. You can imagine these wonderful teaching scenes straight out of made for TV movies where you sit down and they GET it and you magically cure their problems at home too. But 99% of the time that doesn't happen, and you just have a headache at the end of the day.
So, given this, what I really have to work on is my feeling of "having to" do something, that I don't really "have to" do. I've got to determine for myself what's important and what isn't and stop trying to be Super Teacher all the time (it's no little wonder that the letters emblazoned on Super Teacher's chest would be an ST) and just start trying to be whatever the heck it is that comes under that...
Case in point, finding out that I might be able to get webspace to host a website again. I lost my access to 1 and 1 and my website there months ago. I'd love to have webspace again...
But my mind tells me "You must redesign your webpage now! Make it better! Oh, and update your CV that you haven't touched in a year or more!"
Which, if I'm totally honest, is the last thing I need to work on right now. I have to read for Thursday (and Monday, but that seems far in the future right now). I have to move into my office, and pick out what random assorted office crap is going with me. I have to figure out when in the hell I'm going to have time to eat on Thursday--but I am *not* going to have time to update my CV by then.
As for the website, I could work on it, I guess, but not this week. It's not going to be CSS--that's for sure--because I lack a PC at home to test it on thoroughly (btw, Windows Vista sucks, please spare yourself the cash when it comes out). My Mac is very very slow, I'm running software on it that I probably shouldn't be--overtaxed processors are never much fun--and the latest version of Dreamweaver is SO slow on it that I can literally run nothing else (nevermind that Photoshop and Dreamweaver won't even open on the PC, because Vista swallows so much memory...)
Nope nope, I don't have the time, energy, or computing power to give over to making a brand spanking new webpage right now.
But I feel like I "have to."
Sunday, September 03, 2006
Blogging... in general....
I've had a "blog" of some sort or another since early 2001, although I didn't hear the word "blog" for several years after. In fact, I viewed blogs as entirely different than the personal online journal I kept as an undergrad--they were something that "professionals" did about technology or culture or news, while we mere mortal college students kept online "journals" or "diaries" but I digress. I had found opendiary.com at bored.com or a related site, and got myself hooked up with somewhere to write immediately. I still talk to 3 friends I made on that system fairly often, so it's strengths seemed to be in meeting new people. As my friends moved onto the system (not at my urging) I quickly found out what the biggest problems about blogging are.
Personal blogs are simply excellent at pissing people off. I discovered fairly quickly, once many of my college friends were on the system, that just about anything I wrote about could cause a negative reaction. This seems to be true on both opendiary.com and livejournal.com, where I still have accounts, but seldom write anything. I once posted about having raffle tickets available for friends if they were interested, only to get 25+ comments telling me that I was "shoving my friend's faces in the fact that I had money and they didn't." I still feel like I need to rhetorically qualify that statement that I was required to sell 20 of the suckers and couldn't afford them myself either, but there were people on that list willing to buy them. However, to a one they told me they didn't feel it was "right" after reading other's responses.
So I'm quiet in the blog-o-sphere these days. I love reading and making comments, I'm not entirely sold on writing. It's not that I don't have anything interesting to say from time to time (ask me about my "Jesus up my nose" story) but it IS that:
A) Posting anything academic and tied to my real name seems potentially risky to my career, so I would prefer to remain anonymous (my opinions on several theorists have completely changed in the past 3 years, so having ever officially "published" anything about them would have been foolish at the time)
and
B) I don't really feel like inspiring a "wankfest" over small stuff.
This leaves me here. I'm blogging for a course and I keep a small personal blog on myspace (it's really sad when the most annoying site has privacy controls that I like the most). I use my livejournal account to read several journals and more communities. I've required students in the past to write journal entries--should I move this writing to blogs? Are my students people that write more coherently by hand or online? Are they more reflective in one sphere or the other? Who ARE my students at Wayne State? I'm hoping that with time, and with 6010, that some of these questions will be answered.
In the meantime, here are some blogs I read regularly (also see my del.icio.us for more):
The Ferrett: The Watchtower of Destruction
Cheryl Ball's Blog
Anne Wysocki's Blog
Angie J's LJ
Debunking White: Race Studies/Discussion Community
Gizmodo Technology Blog
Bitch PhD
Personal blogs are simply excellent at pissing people off. I discovered fairly quickly, once many of my college friends were on the system, that just about anything I wrote about could cause a negative reaction. This seems to be true on both opendiary.com and livejournal.com, where I still have accounts, but seldom write anything. I once posted about having raffle tickets available for friends if they were interested, only to get 25+ comments telling me that I was "shoving my friend's faces in the fact that I had money and they didn't." I still feel like I need to rhetorically qualify that statement that I was required to sell 20 of the suckers and couldn't afford them myself either, but there were people on that list willing to buy them. However, to a one they told me they didn't feel it was "right" after reading other's responses.
So I'm quiet in the blog-o-sphere these days. I love reading and making comments, I'm not entirely sold on writing. It's not that I don't have anything interesting to say from time to time (ask me about my "Jesus up my nose" story) but it IS that:
A) Posting anything academic and tied to my real name seems potentially risky to my career, so I would prefer to remain anonymous (my opinions on several theorists have completely changed in the past 3 years, so having ever officially "published" anything about them would have been foolish at the time)
and
B) I don't really feel like inspiring a "wankfest" over small stuff.
This leaves me here. I'm blogging for a course and I keep a small personal blog on myspace (it's really sad when the most annoying site has privacy controls that I like the most). I use my livejournal account to read several journals and more communities. I've required students in the past to write journal entries--should I move this writing to blogs? Are my students people that write more coherently by hand or online? Are they more reflective in one sphere or the other? Who ARE my students at Wayne State? I'm hoping that with time, and with 6010, that some of these questions will be answered.
In the meantime, here are some blogs I read regularly (also see my del.icio.us for more):
The Ferrett: The Watchtower of Destruction
Cheryl Ball's Blog
Anne Wysocki's Blog
Angie J's LJ
Debunking White: Race Studies/Discussion Community
Gizmodo Technology Blog
Bitch PhD
Friday, September 01, 2006
Researching Berlin Alexanderplatz.... (7010 reading, but worth sharing)
Berlin Alexanderplatz, it is noted in our text, is written in the style of James Joyce. Doblin apparently read Ullysses after nearly completing the work, then went back and changed things, edited, and so on. This goes a long way to explain why some paragraphs are written in an entirely logical fashion and others are completely stream of consciousness, written from different points of view, etc.
The other thing I discovered in a short (very short) search was that the book has been made into a movie twice: once, Doblin himself worked on it, the second time, the movie was 15 1/2 hours long.
I've also noticed that some of the mid to late book intros are very clearly poems. I haven't yet determined if the sections headed by poems are the ones in which he is crazier than those written in prose, nor have I had a chance to go to my ill gotten German edition to see if those rhyme and are in meter too. Maybe that $1.50 on Amazon will be well spent yet.
The other thing I discovered in a short (very short) search was that the book has been made into a movie twice: once, Doblin himself worked on it, the second time, the movie was 15 1/2 hours long.
I've also noticed that some of the mid to late book intros are very clearly poems. I haven't yet determined if the sections headed by poems are the ones in which he is crazier than those written in prose, nor have I had a chance to go to my ill gotten German edition to see if those rhyme and are in meter too. Maybe that $1.50 on Amazon will be well spent yet.
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